Empire of Dirt
by the ersatz diplomat
Summary: A HP Ficlets ahoy! A storage facility for those little plot-bunnies, or plot-dragons. Characters- Any and/or All. Pairings- I'm fond of the canon pairings. Rated T for safety.
1. Exordium

Disclaimer- I ownest not these characters, for they doth belong to someone else.

Author's Note- A bit of a departure from my usual R/T, but so many people have said they liked Sirius...so here he is, first person POV after escaping from Azkaban. Many thanks to Johnny Cash, and Aicalas.

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_Exordium_

_--_

The best thing- the greatest thing about being out, is the silence. Not dead silence, no... I can hear birds and dogs and people talking, engines purring (I do love that noise), and music. Crappy, tinny, annoying teen-girl pop music, but music nonetheless. It's just so _peaceful_. There's no screaming. No wailing. No gnashing of teeth, no Dickensian rattling of chains...no bitchy cousin three cells down, shrieking like a banshee all hours of the day and night because she's pining for her long lost prince of darkness(the whore!).  
No spooky dementor breath. No fingernails scraping on the stone walls of the prison.

All, in all...it's _lovely_.  
It's a beautiful evening. Warm and summery, the type of day that would be perfect for cruising around on the motorbike with a pretty girl...that will have to wait, I guess.

I thought for a while, right after I got out, about paying a little visit to my ol' pal Moony. And by 'for a while', I mean 'for about five seconds', because I remembered that in all likelihood, he is still under the (_completely_ _wrong!_) impression that I sold our best friends(not to mention their baby- my godson, for Merlin's sake!) to the most evil man in history. I've been dying to talk to Moony, to try and convince him that I would never have done such a thing...but he'd probably kill me without question.  
That, or he'd tell me to go take a shower. And I'm not willing to risk either.

So for now, I'm camped out in this little park here on...Magnolia Crescent or Privet Drive? Something to do with Herbology, I was never much good with plants...or with _growing_ them, at least! Har har har.  
This is a Muggle neighborhood, I've been here once before, with James and Remus, actually; the year before Harry was born. We egged the Dursley's house on Halloween. James charmed the eggs to stick like glue when they splattered- they were there for weeks. _Classic_...those were good times.

And maybe I _did_ spend too much time in the slammer, as the Muggles say...I just saw an escaped balloon- one of those huge kind for parades, floating over the park. Am I that crazy? Maybe I _should_ turn myself in...

Oh, it's a floating _lady_. She's yelling for _Vernon_. Now I _know_ I'm in the right neighborhood.

I heard the boy telling off his uncle before I ever saw him. "She deserved it," he says. That balloon...I mean, lady...must be one of his relations. How funny! His dad would be so proud. And here he comes now, storming down the street, trunk and owl in hand. Looks _just like_ James, but reminds me of me, running away from people that don't care anyway. Poor kid. Another reason why I so desperately need to clear my name- those people aren't his _family._  
The whole 'revenge' thing is just a bonus and...

Oh, bloody hell. He saw me, and I think I scared him. He tripped backwards, and then bam! There's the Knight Bus. I didn't mean to frighten him, but then again, I am rather scary looking, especially at night, and if you're already kind of freaked out about inflating your kinfolk...

Did I mention that sometimes I'm a dog? Not in the metaphorical sense, though I'm sure some women will disagree...  
Literally. An actual big, black, shaggy dog. But not all the time, though, just when I _want_ to be a dog. It can be quite handy when one is trying to evade Magical Law Enforcement, but the fleas are a bitch...not unlike my mother (that one never gets old!).  
Not very many people know that I can turn into a dog at will. James did, Remus does- obviously he values secrets between friends more than _some_ _people _(who will go unmentioned because they aren't worth being mentioned) do, or else the authorities would have caught on to me by now. It's the perfect disguise- the only other rat that knows is in no fit state to tell anyone, now is he? And if I have my way, he'll never get the chance to squeak about it.

Though, there is always the hazard of being picked up by the local dogcatcher, but such is the life of an escapee.

Until Things Are Brighter...

_-SB_

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review?


	2. Clever Editing

**Disclaimer**- I own no characters!  
**Author's Note**- A drabbly type thing written for the contagious meme on LJ, requested by Gilpin25.  
**Characters-** Remus and Molly  
**Prompt-** Picture  
**Word Count-** 500  
**Rating-** PG 13  


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Clever Editing

"Remus, are you in there?" The matronly little red-haired woman raised a hand to rap on the door, knocking once before it swung open. She shifted the laundry basket to her other hip, collecting from it a stack of ironed and starched, frayed and patched shirts.

"G'morning?" He blinked sleepily, halfway through the process of pulling on a gray t-shirt; she didn't have the heart to tell him it was inside out.

"Good morning," She smiled, handing him the shirts. "Breakfast'll be ready in about half an hour, just so you know."

"Thanks, Molly."

"One more thing-"

"Yes?"

She reached into the stack of laundry, retrieving a battered magazine.

"Do you have any idea who this might belong to?" She held it out gingerly, a disdainful look on her round face. The magazine was full of pictures- of Muggle girls wearing the absolute least amount of clothing possible. He was wide awake now, running a hand through mussed hair, lips in a thin line. He took it, unblushingly.

"I believe the owner resides in that room over there." He nodded towards a door down the hall. "Do you want to dispose of it, or shall I spare you and return it to him myself?"

"Oh, I'll just sneak it back to him in his laundry. I was worried one of my boys left that here, I'd have to talk to them about their choices in literature." She could tell he was surprised that she would return the questionable publication to its owner instead of chucking it in the trashbin where it belonged. Molly, tactful as she was, could only stand to watch Sirius complain so much and the brunt of his churlishness was absorbed by the man before her, someone who already had enough to deal with.

"Well, if you're going to do that, I've a suggestion..." He disappeared back into the room, returning with a quill. "If you've a mind to teach him not to leave his things laying about." He grinned, scrambling to pull the door shut behind his back; though the room was dim she caught a glimpse of clothes thrown over the back of a desk chair, quite sure they weren't his, as she'd never seen him wear anything in a color that even _remotely_ resembled fuchsia before.

"What do you mean?"

"Just a bit of clever editing. Some of those ladies look as if they've misplaced their beards, and I think that a few of them may have too many teeth..."

"I think so too." Molly smiled pleasantly, shoving the magazine back into the laundry and tucking the quill into her apron pocket. She had always liked Remus, and decided that it was worth being on the receiving end of some Black rage to make him smile, though she had a feeling that a well-played prank on Sirius was not the reason for the silly, dazed grin on his face.

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You know what to do...


	3. A Red Letter Day

Disclaimer- These characters certainly aren't mine.  
Characters: Molly Weasley, Albus Dumbledore  
Prompt: 'Scold'  
Author's Note- This is borne of the LJ Drabble Meme, prompt given by Tegdoh.  
Word Count- 300

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_A Red Letter Day_

The look of freckle-faced dread was not unfamiliar to the bearded man sitting at the staff breakfast table. The corner of his mouth twitched; a smile fully evident in cheerful blue eyes.

The ginger-haired boy at the Gryffindor table held the bright red, slightly smoking envelope in his trembling hand. Surely a little note from home could not possibly be as frightening as, say, stealing his father's (already rather illegal) flying automobile…And then flying that automobile into a tree on school property…

"Just open it, Ron." Neville Longbottom urged him on, looking as panicked as the letter recipient, if not more so. Harry Potter was flushed red with embarrassment and seemed uncertain whether he should laugh or crawl under the table. Ginevra sat across from the group, sniggering behind the leather-bound journal in which she perpetually seemed to be writing. The twins, Gred and Forge (for Albus knew their _true_ identities) were watching with eager anticipation. This would make their day, and quite possibly, their weekend. Hermione Granger surveyed the scene with a disparaging expression, and then sighed in exasperation.

There had been ginger-haired, freckled boys at the Gryffindor table for the past ten -odd years, so the reprimanding, motherly tones of Molly Weasley, emanating from a smoldering envelope were hardly foreign. For a moment, he half-expected to see her standing there in her perfectly-pressed school uniform, wearing her expertly-shined prefect badge, rebuking Arthur for accidentally detonating _another_ of his Muggle Studies projects in the Gryffindor common room.

Albus thought, for fairness' sake, someone should inform Ronald about the time his mother charmed the Slytherin Quidditch team uniforms to pink with purple frills and copious amounts of lace, but thought better of it. He didn't personally want to be on the receiving end of one of her (now infamous) Howlers.

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You know you want to...


	4. Be Yourself

**Disclaimer**- I don't own the characters  
**Author's Note**- Written for the contagious meme on LJ, requested by MrsTater  
**Characters-** Tonks/Remus  
**Prompt-** mirror  
**Word Count-** 501  
**Rating-** PG 13

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Be Yourself

"Just be yourself."  
Her mother had long abandoned 'Tojours Pur', instilling her only daughter with a mantra more suiting and yet completely contradictory to who Tonks was. She was always herself, and never herself- her only consistency lay in her inconsistency, her ability to be a thousand different people in the span of an hour, and still be herself- in shades of personality that few had the privilege of witnessing. She had been compared to many things, by many people, and had never agreed with any of them, save the last.

"Your whole family has star names, Dora. You're brighter than that, you're like...like a supernova."

She glared at her own reflection, taking a white-knuckled grip on the bathroom sink. A supernova, she'd read, is a dying star, and for all its fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, it would eventually collapse from the inside out, dragging everything around it into a silent black oblivion.

He was always right.

Her fingertips left the cold porcelain and found her own face, tugging through lank, mud brown hair, tracing lips that were too thin, eyes too round and scared. She leaned her wrist against the mirror, brushing the back of her hand across her eyes, then brought the side of her fist down as hard as she could against the glass. The corner shattered, slivers falling, ringing on the tile, catching in the sink. She left her hand on the wall, the white paint spattered with red drops that immediately started a race towards the floor. A thin river of blood trickled down her wrist, falling from her elbow to mingle with the dust on the toe of her boot.

"Because supernovas," He had wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, tilting her chin up to look at the night sky. "They're brighter than _entire galaxies_. Also, they pretty much destroy everything in their path, and they turn funny colours..."

She took a step back from the mirror, calmly pulling a needle-thin sliver of glass from her palm. She thought, numbly, that maybe he had taken everything he liked about her, all of her fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, and had stolen it...maybe plotted it on a star chart, now rolled up and packed safely away in the knapsack slung over his shoulder, probably between a folded-up jumper and a copy of 'Prufrock and Other Observations'...maybe he was saving it for her, maybe he would bring it back. But he had said he might not come back, there was a chance...

He was always right, but this time she wanted him to be wrong. Then again, even if he did come back, there was no chance...

She turned on her heel and strode from the room without a backwards glance. If she had to be herself, if this was who she was, she didn't want to waste anymore time looking at it.

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You know what to do...


	5. Sea of Tranquility

**Title**: Sea of Tranquility  
**Rating**: G  
**Word Count**: 765  
**Characters**: Remus Lupin, age 9  
**Summary: **_Mum told_ _him that it was very important____ for__ him to learn Astronomy, that he was old enough, using the voice she usually saved for when she told him not to play in the street, or talk to strangers, or try to do magic. __  
_  
**Author's Note**: I don't know if this scene has been done before! The characters aren't mine, you know, and anything else you recognized was borrowed from a little place called NASA.  
Previously posted on LJ.

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Sea of Tranquility

Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin. He liked their names and their voices. They were garbled, and sounded very far away, but he could feel their excitement...

_Engine arm is off. Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.__  
_  
Technically, he was breaking the rules. He wasn't supposed to be out of bed, not at four in the morning, but he had waited, watching the moon rise out his window until it was time to sneak down the stairs and into the sitting room. He plopped down on the braided rug, right in front of the television, twiddling the knobs to make it not as loud. He didn't want to wake his parents. The telly glowed in the dark room, and he sat as close as he could to the screen, listening intently...

_That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind._

The picture looked dusty, speckled. His father called it _snow_, though he was sure that it didn't snow on the moon...The moon, he could see, was white and black and beautiful and ugly, all at the same time. It was all light and shadows. The Sea of Tranquility, the newsman said, is where the spaceship landed. He knew about spaceships, he had books about them. He knew about the moon, too, but that sandy, rocky desert didn't look like a sea. Maybe a dried-up sea; there was no water. Just boulders and dust.

The man in the big white spacesuit (he knew about spacesuits, too- made for hiding the man inside it from things in space that could hurt him) bounced and jumped and skipped and seemed to float. It looked like magic, but it was gravity, the newsman said. On the moon; gravity is weaker than on the Earth. This, he thought, is not true, because he thought he could feel the moon pulling on him all the time, but he didn't know why…

_Okay. It's quite dark here in the shadow and a little hard for me to see that I have good footing. I'll work my way over into the sunlight here without looking directly into the Sun. _

He pressed his hand against the glass screen, feeling the warm static, the humming of the tubes. He ran his fingers over the image, over surface of the moon, imagining he could feel the sand and the rocks and the funny floating sensation like the spaceman. He imagined wearing the spacesuit and thought about what it would look like to peer through that shiny helmet and see Earth so very, very far away. It would be odd, he thought, to wear that kind of a suit...sometimes it felt like he was already wearing a spacesuit, he never felt that he looked like who he was on the inside...

_Isn't that something! Magnificent sight out here...__Magnificent desolation..._

Watching the moon on the television was fun, like watching through a telescope. He had a telescope- Mum was teaching him Astronomy, she said it means "laws of the stars". Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, she would bring him cocoa and they would look through the telescope at far-away stars and planets. They looked at the moon a lot-- he had a map of it in his room, on the wall by the window. They learned the phases of the moon, the names of the empty seas. _Waning Crescent. Waxing Gibbous_. _Mare Tranquillitatis. Mare Imbrium. _

It sounded like spells, to him.

The boy crossed his legs, pulling at a loose thread on the cuff of his pajamas. He was sick all the time, it seemed, and sometimes he hurt all over very badly and he had scary dreams...Some mornings he would wake up looking like he had fallen down the stairs, all cut up and bruised. Mum and Dad whispered about the moon, and cures, and a man named Albus and a dog named Greyback. He didn't understand it, so when they started whispering, he went to his room to read about spaceships and aliens and other galaxies.

_It says "Here Men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."_

Mum told him that it was _very important____ for_ him to learn Astronomy, that he was _old enough,_ using the voice she usually saved for when she told him not to play in the street, or talk to strangers, or try to do magic.  
She hardly ever used that voice, so it must really be _very important. _

He hoped that nine years old was quite ___old enough_ to learn.


	6. VoodooMatic 500

**Title:** VoodooMatic 500  
**Characters:** McGonagall  
**Rating:** G  
**Word Count:** 150, or a drabble and a half.  
**Summary** Ol' McGoogles gets the most useful Christmas gift ever, and from the most unlikely source. OoTP Era!

Written for my friend Tegdoh on LJ.

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The round, tartan tin of chocolates sat on her desk unopened for a full three days after Christmas, all because of the gift tag:

_To: Professor McGonagall  
From: George & Fred_

For that reason alone she wouldn't have touched it until, ashamed of her lack of Gryffindor courage, she snatched the lid off the tin, expecting a patented prank.

It was only chocolates, Honeyduke's special truffles. She sniffed them suspiciously, and then pulled out the top layer of sweets to investigate further—the Weasley twins were cunning. Underneath the chocolates was a miniature cloth effigy of a woman wearing a pink cardigan, a velvet hairbow, and a toady expression. Just next to it laid a paper packet of long stick pins.

"VoodooMatic 500," read the tag attached. "Patented Wheeze Technology—Tester Edition."

Smiling for the first time in months, Minerva took up a quill and began writing a thank-you note.

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r and r, y/y?


	7. Offbeat

**Title:** Offbeat  
**Characters:** Remus, Tonks, and Ginny  
**Word Count:** 300 words, or a drabble times 3!  
**Summary:** Lessons in Muggle Drummer Appreciation, provided by Nymphadora Tonks. Ginny Weasley's POV.  
**Author's Note:** This was written for my dear friend Eril_87 on LJ:D

***

"Keith Moon!" Tonks shouts, leaning forward onto the table. Her elbow knocks against the stack of music magazines were flipping through a moment ago. Tonks is supposed to be teaching me about Muggle music, but we got diverted and started talking about boys instead…

Anyway, we were _interrupted._

By Professor Lupin.

_Again._

He _always_ does this--we'll be in the middle of some highly important girl-talk and he'll dash into the room, looking for a place to hide from Sirius. I mean, I don't care, but he came in_ right_ in the middle of me telling Tonks about how cute I think some particular guy is...

It was _so_ embarrassing. They laughed at me. For _ten minutes._

And then _they_ got diverted, and now they're arguing about who is the better Muggle drummer.

"John Bonham." He grins at her over a copy of _Q Magazine_. I know that grin—that is the grin of a guy who is up to no good. I would solemnly swear on it, it looks the same on every guy, no matter how old they are. Believe me; you learn the telltale signs of suspicious behavior at an early age in the Weasley household.

"Keith Moon!" She slams her palm on the table and her spiky pink hair bounces. "Magic Bus! My Generation! Baba O'Riley!"

"John Bonham." He says again, skimming through the magazine.

"I can't believe you don't like Keith Moon," she sighed, laying her head on her arms and knocking over a heap of plastic tapes.

"Tonks, _you_ only like him 'cos his name is—"

I _almost_ say it, and they both stare at me. Tonks' eyes are huge with horror and Professor Lupin is grinning that same up-to-no-good grin.

"...'Cos his name is...Keith?"

That's my cue to leave, I think.

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Reviews? Disagreements? (I'm personally a big fan of Neil Peart).


	8. For a Time Such as This

**Title**: For Such a Time as This  
**Characters**: Remus Lupin, mentions of Harry Potter and Sirius Black. _Prisoner of Azkaban_ era.  
**Rating**: G  
**Word Count**: 333  
**Author's Note:** I was challenged to write a PoA fic by the lovely Gilpin, so this is for her, if she likes it! ;D The title is from Esther 4:14, KJV.

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For a Time Such as This

He spread the map across the wooden desk and the ink swirled indecisively, recognizing his touch—it was _his_ handwriting, _his_ painstakingly drawn sketches lurking beneath the concealments, but the password, their motto, lodged in his throat.

The creased and faded parchment smoothed out, draping over both front and back of the desk as he laid a hand on it. It gleamed in the evening light like a sheet of hammered gold. The intricate loom of spellwork, far more advanced than he and his friends should have ever attempted, was still as strong as the day they had left it.

It was their immortality.

The pounding of his heart seemed to echo in the classroom, still taken aback at seeing a black-haired, bespectacled boy in the darkened hall, clutching the worn-out guide to the castle against his chest as if his existence depended on it. Harry had no idea of what he held, or the hands that had brought the map into being, but Lupin recognized it the instant he saw it.

What the boy had said that night as he turned to leave still troubled him. Everything would change if Harry was right about Pettigrew. The map _never_ lied, though it had been invented to ease the escapades of young men too bright and bored to be bothered by authority.

For years he had asked himself why, of all the ideas they had and all of their dreams and plans they had made, did this one come to fruition? Why had The Map worked so well? Why had it worked at all?

And why had it found him again?

The undeniable, somewhat illegible scrawl of Sirius Black bled through the parchment, just above his fingertips.

_Would Mr Moony be so kind as to give us the damn password already?_

Remus felt the faintest flicker of promise, encouragement from the embers of a hope he had given up years ago.

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

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	9. Watch Out, He Bites!

**Title:** Watch Out, He Bites!  
**Rating:** E for everyone!  
**Characters:** James and Remus, with Peter, just because he seemed to fit.  
**Word Count:** 265  
**Summary:** James gets a furry little problem of his own.

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Watch Out, He Bites!

"James, what is that?"

"It's...a pony." James finished disgustedly, nodding towards the paddock fence behind his garage. A large pony was tied to the rail, nibbling away at the roof of Hedwig's doghouse. Hedwig glared up at the pony, but being a Dachshund, he did nothing out of fear of being stomped to death. "I—I got it for my birthday."

"Oh," Peter said, sympathetically, with an air of solemnity more common to morticians than twelve-year-old boys. "I'm so sorry." He patted his friend's shoulder as they stood on the back porch, watching the pony stamp away flies. "You wanted a new broom, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but Mum says it's traditional and proper for Potters—" The pony twitched its tail, and James changed the subject. "Hey, have you seen Remus?"

At that moment, the door slammed open and a skinny, brown-haired boy in holey jeans came striding out, a half-eaten apple in one hand and the pony's bridle in the other.

"What-where are you going?"

"Riding." He said, without turning around.

"The pony will bite you, Remus!" Peter yelled after him. "It'll hurt! It has sharp teeth! You'll bleed!"

For some reason, this was exceedingly funny to Remus, who doubled over in almost hysterical laughter. The pony's ears swiveled and it whinnied in his direction.

"I wonder what's so funny..." James mused, while the boy and pony snorted in stereo.

"There's something really wrong with him," Peter muttered.

"I know," Young Potter agreed, watching his friend climb aboard the pony and take off toward the pine grove at a quick trot. "He's completely loony."

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Reviewers get a free pony. XD


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